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AI
Companies should be designing their products to maximize productivity, economic output, and military superiority, but instead are racing for market dominance and completely ignoring mental health and other risks, like psychosis and loss of critical thinking. Harris says that ethics around AI get thrown out the window relative to the incentive. And for big tech firms, the ultimate prize is achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), so they need to hook as many users as they can as quickly as possible.
“AI is the most powerful, inscrutable and uncontrollable technology we've ever invented,” Harris warns, “Why are we recklessly racing this out to society psychologically in ways that we definitely don't know what we're doing? This is just stupidity.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube.Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Can we align AI with society’s best interests? Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast to discuss the risks to humanity and society as tech firms ignore safety and prioritize speed in the race to build more and more powerful AI models. AI is the most powerful technology humanity has ever built. It can cure disease, reinvent education, unlock scientific discovery. But there is a danger to rolling out new technologies en masse to society without understanding the possible risks. What if the way we deploy artificial intelligence, Harris argues, isn’t inevitable, but a choice?
The tradeoff between AI’s risks and potential rewards is similar to deployment of social media. It began as a tool to connect people and, in many ways, it did. But it also become an engine for polarization, disinformation, and mass surveillance. That wasn’t inevitable. It was the product of choices—choices made by a small handful of companies moving fast and breaking things. Will AI follow the same path? Is there a path forward where innovation aligns with humanity?
“If we deploy AI recklessly in a way that causes AI psychosis or kids' suicides or degrades mental health or causes every kid to outsource their homework,” Harris warns, “it's very obvious the long-term trajectory of we are going to have a weaker civilization.”
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Whoever dominates, the payoff will be huge. Autonomous machines will transform industries like transportation, healthcare, and logistics. They can offset labor shortages in aging societies like Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Morgan Stanley estimates humanoid robots could be a $5 trillion industry by 2050. But at least right now, physical AI is still awkward. Robots stumble and all down. Programming dexterity and intuition is a lot more challenging than text prediction. But given how fast the field is accelerating, soon, the challenge won’t be whether AI becomes part of our world but how we choose to live with it.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Artificial intelligence is transforming the global workforce, but its impact looks different across economies.
Christine Qiang, Global Director in the World Bank’s Digital Vice Presidency, tells GZERO Media’s Tony Maciulis that while “every single job will be reshaped,” developing countries are seeing faster growth in demand for AI skills than high-income nations.
Connectivity remains a critical foundation. “So many people still don't have energy, and many have digital access, but they are not using it,” Qiang notes, stressing the importance of affordable, reliable infrastructure.
She highlights data as “the new electricity” for developing economies to leapfrog into the AI era, provided global governance keeps large language models open and inclusive.
This conversation is presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical discussions on the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.
Almost 4 billion people lack the infrastructure to participate in the AI revolution. Can business and policy leaders ensure technology narrows, not widens, the global gap?
Vice chair and President of Microsoft, Brad Smith says, "AI will either help close the great divide economically in the world, or it will make it wider." With billions lacking power, internet, and digital literacy, the stakes are high.
Smith argues that only bold partnerships between governments and companies can ensure AI lifts everyone.
Watch more Global Stage coverage from the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly here: gzeromedia.com/globalstage
President Joe Biden signs an executive order about artificial intelligence as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on at the White House on Oct. 30, 2023.
US President Joe Biden on Monday signed an expansive executive order about artificial intelligence, ordering a bevy of government agencies to set new rules and standards for developers with regard to safety, privacy, and fraud. Under the Defense Production Act, the administration will require AI developers to share safety and testing data for the models they’re training — under the guise of protecting national and economic security. The government will also develop guidelines for watermarking AI-generated content and fresh standards to protect against “chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks.”
The US order comes the same day that G7 countries agreed to a “code of conduct” for AI companies, an 11-point plan called the “Hiroshima AI Process.” It also came mere days before government officials and tech-industry leaders meet in the UK at a forum hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The event will run tomorrow and Thursday, Nov. 1-2, at Bletchley Park. While several world leaders have passed on attending Sunak’s summit, including Biden and Emmanuel Macron, US Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan to participate.
When it comes to AI regulation, the UK is trying to differentiate itself from other global powers. Just last week, Sunak said that “the UK’s answer is not to rush to regulate” artificial intelligence while also announcing the formation of a UK AI Safety Institute to study “all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation through to the most extreme risks of all.”
The two-day summit will focus on the risks of AI and its use of large language models trained by huge amounts of text and data.
Unlike von der Leyen’s EU, with its strict AI regulation, the UK seems more interested in attracting AI firms than immediately reining them in. In March, Sunak’s government unveiled its plan for a “pro-innovation” approach to AI regulation. In announcing the summit, the government’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology boasted the country’s “strong credentials” in AI: employing 50,000 people, bringing £3.7 billion to the domestic economy, and housing key firms like DeepMind (now owned by Google), while also investing £100 million in AI safety research.
Despite the UK’s light-touch approach so far, the Council on Foreign Relations described the summit as an opportunity for the US and UK, in particular, to align on policy priorities and “move beyond the techno-libertarianism that characterized the early days of AI policymaking in both countries.”- UK AI Safety Summit brings government leaders and AI experts together - GZERO Media ›
- AI agents are here, but is society ready for them? - GZERO Media ›
- Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity - GZERO Media ›
- Should we regulate generative AI with open or closed models? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Talking AI: Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains what's missing in the conversation - GZERO Media ›
- OpenAI is risk-testing Voice Engine, but the risks are clear - GZERO Media ›
- One big thing missing from the AI conversation | Zeynep Tufekci - GZERO Media ›
As part of a wide-ranging conversation on the GZERO World podcast, oncologist and Pulitzer prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee walks Ian Bremmer through one of the most groundbreaking uses of AI in medicine today: generative drug discovery. It’s not just about speeding up research—it’s about creating entirely new molecules that no human has ever seen.
Using AI, researchers can now analyze the shape of a dysfunctional protein—like one found in a cancer or autoimmune cell—and generate chemical compounds that could bind to and modify its behavior. “This is true generative chemistry,” Mukherjee says. “Every time we do this in collaboration with a machine, the machine learns it, and it learns it forever.”
The process is like solving a puzzle with a million possible pieces. With each failure, the AI learns more, narrowing down candidates until it finds a match. It’s already produced new antibiotics with never-before-seen structures—and Mukherjee believes this is just the beginning of a medical revolution.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.